I’m Jewish, according to Jewish law and by cultural connections to Jewish traditions, though I’m not in the least bit observant. In addition, in the words of the thread that inspired this one, I am married to an Jew. He isn’t religious or observant either, but it’s a crucial element of his identity. That is in part due to where he was born and raised (Russia) and the particular cultural environment he lived in, including experiences of both officially sanctioned and lower level everyday anti-Semitism.
I’m a bit surprised that some people on this thread have no Jewish acquaintances or very tenuous links to anyone Jewish. I couldn’t even count the number of people I know who identify as Jewish to one degree or another.
There are only about 14 million Jews in the world out of a total world population of about 7 billion. It is a very tiny minority in worldwide terms. The vast majority of Jews in the world only live in Israel and the United States alone (about 12 million or so out of the total 14 million) and they are not evenly dispersed. It is extremely easy for someone to have almost no exposure to Jewish people at all unless they happen to live in an area where they resettled and integrated effectively.
Jewish people have contributed a disproportionate amount to science, technology, financial institutions, entertainment and lots of other pursuits in the U.S. alone but they hardly exist in the vast majority of other countries.
I personally think that it is very strange that antisemitism still runs high in parts of Europe although only a small fraction of the Jews in the world still live there. Their numbers are small even there and incredibly tiny for most other countries.
What, physically? Likely some of the neighbors. I live smack in the middle of the Greater Boston eruv right now. If I hucked a rock out my window on Yom Kippur, I’d probably hit someone wearing a kippah.
More seriously, I ran into Oliver Sacks’ books pretty young. His case studies have had a surprisingly large influence on how I deal with people. I credit his writing with teaching me the fine art of wondering ‘how does this look to someone else?’, and also with the considerably messier art of asking enough strange and nosy questions to figure it out. There are probably (a lot of) others that I wasn’t aware of at the time, but Sacks mentioned family Seders and so forth in a few of his essays.
Good pastrami? I’m envious. And I’ve had bagels brought down to Oceanside from LA better than anything I can get up here - though not as good as New York.
My first real job as a teenager was at an appliance store chain that was owned by a Jewish family, and many of the people who worked there were Jewish. They were all very nice to me. One of them was a college guy, and he asked me one day what I wanted to do after I graduated from high school. I said I would probably get married to the guy I was dating, and I wasn’t really sure about college. He looked at me seriously and said “you are smart enough to be whatever you want to be”. That moment was a big boost to my confidence for a number of reasons, and I never forgot it.
Another person I"ll mention is someone I worked with at a former company, who opened the door for me to be where I am now (he was the GM of one of the business units and brought me onto his leadership team). He departed to run another company and we stay in touch - I think it is more likely than not that we will work together again one day.
I’ll also mention that there have been many, many Jewish authors who have taught and influenced me. A light example: Anyone remember the Rabbi Small series? I learned a lot about Judaism from those books.
I’ve had several important ones, all of them positive.
Growing up, one of my best friends was Jewish. Her mother and my mother also became close. When the grandmother came to live with them after her husband passed, she was a bit taken aback by the close relationship between her daughter and granddaughter and my mother and I, their German-American Catholic friends. Sadly, my friend died of cancer at the age of 42, but her son and my oldest son are still friends to this day.
I met my marvelous Jewish friend Sharon when I was in college. She was such an education (and a revelation) to this midwestern kid. Thanks to the wonders of the electronic age, we still keep in touch regularly - all these years later. Her parents owned a bakery in Skokie, IL, and one summer during college, Sharon and I lived in an apartment over the bakery and worked there. Her parents joked to their friends that they had a German in their attic! I can still make pretty decent challah bread and garlic-salt buns.
I worked for about 5 years for a company owned by a strict orthodox Jewish family. The owner, who was my direct supervisor, was a kind and gentle man who was good to his employees and thus, as an HR person, I found him easy to work for. The only thing differentiating our workplace from any other was the ban on wearing any Christian jewelry or celebrating any Christian holidays, such as Easter or Christmas. Instead of having a Christmas party, we had a New Year’s party.
I am a big fan of the works of Jon Ronson. I only mention that because many of them involve discussion of his background, so it’s not just “I read a book by a Jewish dude.”
About a third of my fraternity was Jewish and I’m still friends with most of them. I dated a “half-Jewish” girl for most of college, and remain friends with her.
I can’t think of any Jewish relatives, though I presume my in-laws include some because my wife grew up in a Jewish-Italian neighborhood in Long Island.
Don’t know this one. Sounds like “Bottles of beer on the wall”; will investigate.
I like the one who’s closest, off hand (heh) to his circumcised penis. Which reminds me: one of the two or three times I caused a scene to fuck with an anti-Semite was earlier this year in Union Square, NYC, where a young new-Nazi wannabe (ram rod straight, white shirt and tie) stood declaring in a sort of monotone to a generally amused and gently heckling crowd all the usual nonsense. I got close when he started with “and the Jews you see are not the real Jews, they are satanic imposters of the Khazars lost tribe…” I started shouting and ran next to him and pulled out my dick for him and the crowd to see, saying “I’ll show you a Jew…You wanna see a real one, we’ll deal with me.”
My maternal grandmother was Jewish. Technically, that means that I am too. Being an atheist is not, apparently, an impediment. As communities to be shoved into without your permission go, it’s not bad.
He isn’t religious or observant either, but it’s a crucial element of his identity. That is in part due to where he was born and raised (Russia) and the particular cultural environment he lived in, including experiences of both officially sanctioned and lower level everyday anti-Semitism.